


beneath this bold and brilliant sun

by maharlika



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Intensely Requited Love, M/M, Plant Metaphors, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Incest, Thor and Loki Are In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-13 13:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12985272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharlika/pseuds/maharlika
Summary: Spring comes creeping with coltsfoot, which the Aesir call widow’s leaf, for their leaves only appear once the yellow flowers have withered. Like miniature suns, they peek out of the grey frost.“I was drawn almost to weeping at the sight of them, they were so familiar,” Loki confides, later that night, and cherishes the way Thor’s eyes widen, his mouth falling open a little at the confession. As if he would swallow down every little truth that Loki deems him worthy of receiving.A Post-Ragnarok Thorki fic set during their first year on Earth. A story about wildflowers, and seasons, and love.This fic is now complete.





	1. spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MajaLi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajaLi/gifts).



> Thank you to April for being the best beta, to Venla for the inspiration, and to Chen and She for the encouragement. Written for Zandra.

The most curious thing about Midgard, Loki decides, is how alive it is. To be a realm so young, he realizes, is to be teeming with stories, always changing, ever vicious, clinging and scraping and struggling. Asgard, in its eternal state, had settled, the taxonomy of its histories studied, noted, tidied, forgotten. Even as a child, Loki had known he could never live the life of a scholar, honed instead for battle and diplomacy as the prince of a realm, but here on Midgard there is not much to do but remember, set into writing, restore, and learn.

And so Loki has taken upon himself the task of recording Asgard’s culture, its histories and folklore, the stories passed through song and poetry. The libraries, Loki had managed to salvage, burrowing a hole through space and time and siphoning the books into an interdimensional pocket. A simple enough working, if hastily and clumsily done. The books will have to be rearranged and set to rights, but at least they are not ash.

But there is knowledge among the people ( _ his people _ , Loki thinks, and it is not as unfamiliar or as unwanted a sentiment as he has often wished) that is not found in dusty tomes, and Loki means to be as a naturalist, plucking specimens and holding them to the light, sketching them out and keeping careful notes. Setting them somewhere safe, so they can be passed on.

The truth on Midgard is this: the gods, after all, are merely stories. And Loki hates to be forgotten.

\--

They arrive in the cold of winter, at the cliff where Odin had left his sons on a course to destroy their own realm. It is a tidy enough end to the All-Father’s rule, to start anew here, at the edge of a land that once worshipped them. 

Thor and Heimdall spend a week in a city called Oslo, negotiating. They return to their cliff with a promise of refuge for their people. In that week, Loki finally works out a spell to keep children from running off the edge and plunging into the cold water below. Aesir are hardy, but it is troublesome for the caretakers to be running after children all day. And whatever children they have left, they must keep safe. 

As Loki perches on the edges of the cliff, and an idea forms. Slowly, he begins to weave his seidr. 

\--

The 25th day of the month called December, Heimdall tells them, is the feast of Christmas. It is dedicated to the son of God (the son’s name is Jesus, Thor says, but the god has no name of his own. Isn’t that strange?), and Loki tries not to rankle at the idea. He and his brother offer prayers at Yule, for it is Odin’s feast, but Asgard as it is is meager, sparse, and the celebrations are simple. 

The early days of the season are for feasting, for slaughtering cattle and drinking wine, but these late days are for surviving. And there is, for Asgard, not much to do except that which is perhaps most difficult: to continue to live and breathe. To go on after the foundations have been ripped from underneath you.

They wait for spring.

\--

The minutiae of ruling hold no interest for Loki, but Thor seems to have taken to it readily enough, with Heimdall at his side and his own relentless guilt. Every night, Loki eases the burden from his brother’s shoulders, only to wake up with Thor hunched at the edge of their bed, poring over reports and accounts and balances. There are bruises across Loki’s back from where Thor had clutched at him in his sleep. Loki hushes his apologies. 

Meanwhile, there is little of Asgard left to be ruled. Thor organizes the tradesmen, the seamstresses, the healers, the mothers, the farmers, discusses his plans with Heimdall and tries to pull the remains of their people together. Loki finds himself being followed and accosted by a wide-eyed gaggle of children, who settle for an exchange of stories for stories, or for tricks, or for illusions, or for secrets. 

Spring comes creeping with coltsfoot, which the Aesir call widow’s leaf, for their leaves only appear once the yellow flowers have withered. Like miniature suns, they peek out of the grey frost. 

“I was drawn almost to weeping at the sight of them, they were so familiar,” Loki confides, later that night, and cherishes the way Thor’s eye widens, his mouth falling open a little at the confession. As if he would swallow down every little truth that Loki deems him worthy of receiving.  

“You used to braid flowers into my hair,” Thor says, “Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Loki says, runs a hand through Thor’s shorn hair, and thinks:  _ I would kill the one who did this to you _ .

The night, when Thor cannot sleep, Loki murmurs, “I would see your hair grow long and golden once again, brother.” So Thor knows he will be there in the morning, and for many more mornings after, and can rest with that yoke fallen from his shoulders. 

\--

One little girl in particular is enamored by the wildflowers, and she spends a day in the fields surrounding their new settlement, sloshing through snow left behind, and picking her way through newly-thawed ground. Loki recognizes her, for her stories are animated and ridiculous, and she holds a special talent for seidr. Her hair is the color of straw, like Thor’s was.

The story she tells Loki is a folktale he’d learned as a child as well: about the woman who had travelled seven realms to gather seven wildflowers, and slept with them under her pillow. That night, she had dreamed of her future spouse, and woke up to travel seven realms anew to find him.

The maids in Frigga’s quarters had giggled about the story to the young and impressionable sons of Odin, but wildflowers did not grow in Frigga’s gardens, and the princes never found seven of them to put under their pillows. When they were old enough to venture out of the palace, they had forgotten the stories of flowers grown wild in favor of stories of dragons, and battle, and glory.

\--

Loki comes up with six and asks Svala for a seventh. The girl obliges, and says, “This one makes my brother sneeze, so Mama doesn’t want it at home.”

“You have my thanks,” Loki says, a fist upon his heart. 

She smiles and says, “A favor for a favor, my prince.”

“Ah,” says Loki, solemn. “Very well.”

“My hair,” she says, “I wish for black hair. Like the woman in your story, with the golden locks turned dark as coal.”

“Your hair is beautiful as it is,” Loki says.

“I want it. For my papa,” she says stubbornly.

“Your papa must have loved your golden hair,” Loki says, for he cannot commit subterfuge or weave lies around children. He can only appeal to the truth.

“I want  _ his _ hair,” she says, insisting, and is perilously close to tears, which Loki cannot abide.

“A compromise, then, my lady,” he says, and reaches out to touch a strand of her hair, where a jet black streak shoots down from the roots to the tips.

“My prince,” she breathes, in awe, then bows and runs away.

Loki stands up, seven wildflowers in his hands, and makes his way home.

\--

It is merely a story, but so is Thor, and so is Loki, and yet here they are. So was Ragnarok, and it came to pass, by Loki’s hand. This will come to pass by Loki’s hand as well, and though he knows what outcome he wishes for, he cannot speak it out loud.

He places the seven wildflowers under his pillow, reciting their names in his head to send himself to sleep.

Loki’s eyes fall shut.

\--

Thor leans over him and presses a kiss to his cheek, his mouth.  _ Loki _ , he breathes, and Loki opens his eyes and nearly weeps for this dream.

Then Thor sneezes, and reality reveals itself.

“Not a dream then,” Loki mutters to himself, as Thor, bewildered, sneezes again.

Even gods, it seems, get hay fever.

\--

When Loki tells Thor the story, pulling his pillow back to reveal the flowers, Thor laughs, and then sneezes, and then laughs some more. In retribution, Loki spells more of the wildflowers into being. His punishment is to endure Thor’s sneezy nuzzles and wet kisses.

“You are disgusting,” Loki informs him.

“Who did you mean to see in your dreams, brother?” Thor teases. He presses his chest up against Loki’s back, and Loki squirms with the heat of him, a brand draped all along Loki’s body.

Loki’s throat tightens with the words he wishes to say.

“Not me, I hope,” Thor says, still teasing, and Loki has had enough.

He wrenches himself from Thor’s arms and pushes him down, hard, into the bed, holding a hand to his brother’s, his king’s throat. His pulse is beating loudly in his ears, and humiliation is hot on his neck, his cheeks.

Thor looks up at him, fond, and smiles.

Loki tightens his grip on Thor’s throat, slowly, slowly, until Thor gasps out a laugh and says, hoarsely, “I do not understand why you would wish for a dream when I am right here, brother.”

“For how long,  _ brother _ ,” Loki says. He tries to form it into a sneer, tries to spit it at Thor’s face but all his anger is in his grip on Thor’s throat, and it only comes out as a flat whisper.

Thor twists his head down to brush his lips against Loki’s wrist.

“Till the end of the world. Till the end of our world, this world, all of them, Loki.”

Finally, Loki releases Thor’s throat.

Thor takes a deep breath, and sneezes.

\--

Despite the sneezes, Thor deftly weaves a crown of wildflowers, large, calloused fingers following patterns they’d learned as children. When the flowers do not have enough stems to hold them together, green flows from Thor’s fingers, seidr of a nature Loki has never seen from him. But Thor is the god of fertility and growing things, and he is coming into his own. Loki cannot begrudge him for it, not when it is so satisfying to see Thor’s power at work. Not when he places the crown upon Loki’s head.

“My husband,” Thor murmurs, “and my king. If you wish, Loki.”

“Ask me properly,” Loki says, and forces Thor’s failure by kissing him, hard.

It is a sweet victory.


	2. summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Aesir encounter a problem, and Thor and Loki find a solution in a unique way.

Loki can feel the summer in his bones as Thor grows restless. At night, in their bed, he is nigh insatiable, settling only when Loki has finished him with his mouth, his fingers, his cock. Every day, thunder rumbles out beyond the sea, drawing closer.

In Asgard, summer would be the season for harvesting wheat, those slender stalks bowing heavily with grain, but there was no wheat to plant in the winter and spring, and thus none to bring home in the summer and autumn. Their people have no shortage of Midgardian food, but it is unsatisfying, leaving them hollow. It is a problem that weighs heavily on Thor, Loki knows. On his own, he has begun to attempt to find a solution, to no avail: seeds from Asgard will not grow on this barren Earth, not even with Loki’s seidr to ease the way.

The last summer Loki had spent on the Realm Eternal had been, as he’d said to Thor, filled with council meetings and audiences with the common folk, with the occasional brief reprieve of theater. He’d kept to Frigga’s gardens the rest of the time, and no one had questioned an old king’s grief over his beloved queen. It was when he thought upon Frigga that Loki felt he best played Odin. For all his faults, the old man had loved her as she had deserved, and so he was not beyond redemption.

Frigga’s gardens had been a perpetual riot of flowers, expanding their empire by degrees as the millennia passed. How Loki wishes she were here to guide his hands and his seidr once again. But he must make do with his own hands and his own seidr, and fight the urge to flee Thor’s side. Fight the urge to draw his cloak of feathers about his shoulders and burst into flight off the edge of their cliff.

For Loki has not loved Thor as he deserves, and is thus beyond redemption. In the arithmetic of his sins and virtues, that is the only equation that matters. Still, he supposes it would not hurt to try to tip the scales.

\--

As Midsummer approaches, Loki finds himself beset by young women and children asking to be taught how to weave crowns out of flowers. He should never have walked out that day with the one Thor had made for him upon his head, but it is not the worst mistake he has made in his life. He sits them in a circle around him and teaches them to weave with stems and leaves and roots, and tries not to let his hands falter for the loss of Asgard’s weaving rooms, their looms and spindles, the cloths and threads spun with sunlight and seidr.

On the morning of Midsummer, it is tradition to throw crowns down the river Ifingr, for whose crown moves downstream the fastest will be next to marry. Beyond the fields, overgrown now with summer grasses, there is a forest, and a river, and his people have weddings to plan. Loki has been gathering Midsummer traditions like golden wheat, letting them grow heavy in his hands. Stories do more now to sustain him and his people than Midgardian bread.

In exchange for the lessons, a young woman chimes in with the tale of the fern-in-bloom. On Midsummer Eve, couples go into the forest to search, and the mystical flowering fern is revealed only to the eyes of true lovers. Eating the flower brings fertility, and the couples emerge, ready to be wed.

“That’s just an excuse to tumble in the forest, of course,” Valkyrie chimes in, spinning a wreath of her own on an index finger.

“You hardly need the excuse,” Loki says, then disappears before she can knock him down.

\--

“How is anyone supposed to see flowers in this dark,” Thor grumbles, but allows Loki to lead him by the hand, deeper into the forest.

“That is hardly the point, brother,” Loki says lightly.

“No?” Thor asks.

Loki smiles, and strips them down with seidr. Thor’s red cloak flutters gracefully to the ground.

“Ah,” says Thor, and then again, and then not much more but that for a while longer.

Loki never feels more alive than when he is astride Thor, riding his cock like a wild thing. He has a singular purpose like this, a plant twisting and winding towards the sun. When he comes to, vines have crawled up his arms and thighs, and Thor is looking up at him with a dazed expression.

“Hmm,” Loki says, and clenches around Thor’s cock. The vines surge, tickling Loki.

“Ah, Loki,” Thor gasps. Then “Oh. I’m sorry.” He reaches a hand to tear the vines away, and Loki catches it and kisses his palm, then sinks his teeth into the meat of it. Thor tastes like good, fresh earth.

Fertility god, Loki remembers. And summer is the season not only of storms, but of growing things.

“We might have found that blooming fern after all,” Loki muses.

Thor laughs. Thunder rumbles, and Thor’s fingers flutter restlessly at Loki’s hips.

“Have at it, mighty God of Thunder,” Loki says magnanimously, and laughs with delight as Thor rolls them over. 

\--

The last task of Midsummer Eve is to light a bonfire, and Thor does so in spectacular fashion, riding high on his and Loki’s fuck in the forest, his powers at full tilt. Lightning comes streaking down from the sky, into the ground, and the mountain of wood piled high bursts into flames. 

Among the cheers of his people, a child shrieks. 

In his mind’s eye, Loki remembers fleeing their realm as it burned, and curses his own stupidity. With barely a thought, he calls to his Jotun skin and leaps into the flame, effectively dousing it. 

“Loki!” Thor shouts, but he is beaten to Loki’s side by a child running up to hug Loki’s legs, seemingly unaware of the cold seeping through his ruined trousers. 

“Are you okay,” Svala sobs, shaking. 

Loki kneels, and fingers her jet-black strand of hair, stark against the rest of her golden head. His fingers, stained with ash like the rest of him, are starting to bleed back into Aesir-pink. Loki has to choke back a cruel laugh, because the children of Asgard have seen much, much worse than their prince in a monster’s skin. 

“I’m fine, dear one,” Loki replies, fighting to keep his voice steady. 

“Loki,” Thor rumbles, his voice thunderous, and lightning crackles through the sky. Svala cries out and flinches away, burrowing into Loki’s side. Loki catches Thor’s stricken expression before his brother is pushing his way back, past the crowd, away from the smoldering remains of their bonfire. 

\--

“They fear me,” Thor whispers, when Loki steps into their room.

“Not all of them,” Loki says. “It is only that the children of Odin have done much to frighten them, lately.”

Thor’s hands twist, and lightning sparks along his spine. His eye glows briefly, before Loki takes two steps and places a cold, Jotun hand upon his cheek. 

“Enough of that,” Loki demands. 

Thor shivers, pressing into the steady cold of Loki’s palm. “I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely, “I’m sorry, brother, I…”

Loki kneels down and jerks Thor’s chin to face him. 

“You  _ will _ control this.” Red eyes meet blue, now, and Thor nods and sighs. 

“You are beautiful like this,” Thor murmurs. 

“You have perverted tastes, Odinson,” Loki replies, but he does not shift back. He gets back on his feet and takes Thor’s short hair in his grasp. Presses Thor’s face against his crotch, and rubs, hard. 

“Is this what you want,” Loki says. 

“Please,” Thor whispers. 

Loki feels Thor’s seidr, heavy and sweet, as he fucks his cock down Thor’s throat. Loki lets Thor swallow him down, lets Thor brush tear-soaked lashes into his skin, rubs his fingers through the spittle and come that drench Thor’s throat.

He grants Thor the favor of pushing him down into the bed and fucking into him, stares up at the ceiling and cries out as the god buries his seed into him, fertile and strong and full of life. 

Outside, finally, it begins to rain. 

**\--**

Loki wakes up to a room bursting with flowers. Furry, purple cow vetches and sunny mayweeds, bunches of yarrow stalking up from the ground, and tiny, white, cow parsley learning how vine up the bed frame. 

“Arrogant, insufferable god,” Loki grumbles, then goes back to sleep when Thor cuddles up to him and snores into his chest. 

They emerge from their home to find that sedum has run riot all over their cliffside. Their people also call sedum Thor’s beard, and, in Asgard, would plant it on their roofs as protection against thunder and lightning, and as an offering to Thor himself.

The succulent plant now grows and blooms from within the jagged crags, beset by the cold, salty water beneath their cliffs.

Life where there should be none. Midgard, Loki thinks, is a very curious place. 

And his lover, even curiouser. 

God of storms and growing things, Loki reminds himself, as red clovers and meadow peas bloom where Thor steps. 

Maybe he’s found the solution to their hunger after all. 

\--

The first Aesir plant to grow on Midgardian soil is a seed from Idunn’s orchard. The blackened seeds are offered by a tiny boy with no parents, clenched in a tiny, trembling hand. Thor kneels down and thanks him with a fist to his chest. 

With the seidr that Loki lacks on his own, Thor presses his hands above the buried seed and coaxes it upwards. When the sun itself beckons to a plant, how can it resist?

\--

On Midsummer day, their people go into the forest to find a river that flows strong. One by one, they throw flower wreaths into the water. Loki only cheats a little to make sure his wreath moves faster than Thor’s. 

“I was already going to marry you, brother, you needn’t have cheated,” Thor says, good natured. 

“You presume much, brother,” Loki says, just to watch Thor’s face fall. Instead, Thor only grows more determined.

“Marry me,” Thor says simply, as he wraps an arm around Loki’s waist and reels him in.

As a plant towards the sun, Loki sways towards Thor, helpless.

He nods, and tilts his head up to meet Thor’s kiss. 

Defeat has never been sweeter.

 


	3. autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows it is a relief, for Thor, to be able to use his power thus. To pound and plough at the earth, to bury seed and coax it out of the soil. To see something grow from hands that have carved out too much destruction. He did not expect it would be a relief for him as well: to know that his hands still have the ability to give life. The seeds could hardly care which hands bury them and allow them to grow. Loki appreciates that.
> 
> He walks through fields of corn, eggplants, pumpkins, trellises heavy with beans and neat little rows of beets, turnips, carrots. Here he is neither prince nor traitor, but another set of hands to help. Here, he kneels on the ground and lets dirt burrow into his nails, into the creases of his palms. If Odin could see him now. If Frigga could.

Summer dies, and autumn approaches.

The children have made a game out of finding and picking berries. Infused now with Thor’s seidr, they ripen in waves along the edges of their new home, keeping away from the cliffs. These, too, at least, are familiar. The strawberries arrive first, wild and heavily scented. Loki joins the children and a few adults in picking, searching them out in the underbrush by smell and touch. A few hours of searching yield little more than a handful of strawberries at a time, and Loki hoards them greedily, because they are Thor’s favorites.

After the strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and cowberries burst into bloom. Houses start to fill with steam as families make jam and syrup. As the autumn moon waxes, currants, red and black, blossom on their branches, and Svala teaches Loki a trick for easy picking: she brushes her hands along the bunches of fruits as if playing a lute, and they fall willingly into her basket.

Late into the autumn come cloudberries, Loki’s favorites. These grow wild and brave, even venturing into the cliffside to catch full sunlight. Loki wakes up in the mornings to a bowl of cloudberries and whipped cream on the table, and Thor’s red cloak draped on chair, for him to wrap around his shoulders as the days grow shorter.

\--

On the equinox, the apples finally bloom, golden and ripe. Thor winks at Loki when they see their people gathered under branches heavy with fruit. Of course Thor would choose the equinox, when light and dark hold equal places in the sky, for this occasion.

They are fortunate to still have children to come of age in the autumn, when they are allowed to take their first bite of Idunn’s apples. Only two dozen or so of them, now, but the celebrations are as merry as ever.

Loki, for his part, offers stories: with a hushed look he gathers the children around and tells them of the nøkken, who plays a violin to lure victims out to thin ice and waits for them in the murky depths of the icy water.

“The stories say to always be polite to the nøkken, and it may teach you how to play its violin. But I think it’s better to be clever, don’t you?” And so Loki goes on to explain how he and Thor themselves had encountered a nøkken, and tricked it with an illusion of meat.

A cold wind blows as Loki whistles to the tune of the nøkken’s violin.

Bjarke shivers and sends a look at the cliff across their settlement. Below, the waters of the fjord crash against the rock. His brother Brandt clasps his hand.

“The nøkken’s gonna EAT YOU if you’re not good, that’s what my mama says!” Ran yells.

“That’s not true! Prince Loki warded the cliff! His seidr’s stronger than the nøkken’s!” Brandt replies.

Brandt looks at Loki with wide eyes, “Right, Prince Loki?”

Loki winks. “And if my seidr doesn’t hold, then Thor will bring out his lightning and thunder, and protect you, for that is what he is meant to do.”

The children cheer and clap, and hush down only when Loki gestures with a finger to his lips. Then they sit, enraptured, listening to story after story about trolls, and grims, and dwarves, and elfs.

“But the scariest of all the creatures, and the most vicious,” and here Loki bares his teeth, letting blue tinge his skin, “Are the jotun.”

Gyda bursts into giggles. “Jotun aren’t scary!” she says.

“Blue is such a pretty color,” says Colborn dreamily.

Svala crawls into Loki’s lap and snuggles close.

“Tell us about vampires and zombies instead!” she says.

Loki blinks. “Where did you learn about those?”

Astrid waves a StarkPad, “This information slate is useful, but it’s sooo primitive.”

Loki sighs. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with furthering your knowledge. But let me warn you: Midgardians are strange. They don’t believe in these things.”

“Then why do they keep telling stories about them?” Svala asks, brow furrowed.

“I suppose they’d forget about them otherwise, right, Prince Loki?” Bjarke says, his voice carried off by the wind.

“Yes,” Loki says, his voice soft. “Yes, they would.”

When the light goes down and the dark takes its place, they set off boats at the edge of the cliff, to mourn their fallen.

Thor and Loki kneel together and murmur their prayers.

In bed that night, Loki reaches into a pocket in space and pulls out an old scarf. Frigga’s own weaving, and the exact shade of Thor’s eyes.

“After,” Loki whispers, “After you left, and I left Odin on Midgard, her affairs still had to be taken care of.”

Thor, stricken by the realization, pulls Loki close, clasps a hand to his neck and kisses his forehead, his cheekbones, his jaw.

“I could not bear to part with a single thing, then, though Vanaheim insisted they deserved some of her weavings. I wish I’d given them away. Then they would not have been lost.”

“You couldn’t have known, brother,” Thor murmurs. “And I’m sorry I was not there to help. I ran away.”

“You needed time, as well,” Loki whispers back.

“Would she be proud of us, do you think?” Thor asks. “Or…”

“She would have been proud,” Loki says, with finality.

“She always had hope you would return.”

“Here I am,” Loki says, magnanimous.

“Yes,” Thor laughs, wet and soft. He kisses Loki.

They curl up impossibly closer, laughing softly with a sort of bone-deep relief.

Loki thinks on a Migardian saying: there is a time for everything under the sun. A time to sow and a time to reap. A time to laugh and a time to weep.

Perhaps this realm isn’t as backwards as Loki had first thought. It certainly has some poetry in it.

\--

Their autumn is, against all odds, a season of harvest. Plants grow rapidly under Thor’s care, and Asgardian crops become a luxury in Midgard. They keep enough for themselves and trade the rest for building materials and clothes and blankets for the coming winter. Loki, too, visits the busy fields: becomes witness and participant to farm work for the first time in his long life.

He knows it is a relief, for Thor, to be able to use his power thus. To pound and plough at the earth, to bury seed and coax it out of the soil. To see something grow from hands that have carved out too much destruction. He did not expect it would be a relief for him as well: to know that his hands still have the ability to give life. The seeds could hardly care which hands bury them and allow them to grow. Loki appreciates that.

He walks through fields of corn, eggplants, pumpkins, trellises heavy with beans and neat little rows of beets, turnips, carrots. Here he is neither prince nor traitor, but another set of hands to help. Here, he kneels on the ground and lets dirt burrow into his nails, into the creases of his palms. If Odin could see him now. If Frigga could.

Most days, Loki and Thor return home at dusk smelling of sweat and clean earth. They cannot get enough of each other, shedding clothes as soon as they have passed their threshold—sometimes just barely—and pressing close. Thor loves to pick Loki up and press into him, holding him and fucking him with raw, gentle strength. Loki loves to have Thor on the floor, the great golden god on his hands and knees, twisting his head back to let Loki shower his face with kisses.

And yet, at night, Loki lays awake, thinking, waiting. There are rumbles of war and calamity shuddering their way through the roots of Yggdrasil. They have been granted almost a year of peace.

Loki knows it cannot last. The Norns would never be so generous, and especially not with him.

And so he spends as much time as he can at Thor’s side, always on his good eye. They read to each other at night, spooled loosely together in their bed, always touching. Thor runs hot, and Loki runs cold, so between them they find the perfect temperature.

\--

Early one morning, they fast their hands together with an old scarf that belonged to their mother, and Thor feeds Loki cloudberries in cream, while Loki feeds him strawberry jam on toast.

They need no more than that. 


	4. winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Stay, never leave,” he chokes out, the words falling unbidden from his mouth. Loose with wine from feasting, and from Thor’s unceasing, relentless devotion. “Please, brother, I…I could not bear...”
> 
> “I’m here, right here,” Thor says, brushing away Loki’s memories. He noses at Loki’s cheekbone, earnest and gentle. He takes Loki’s hands and wraps them around the dagger, then brings it up to his heart, point-first. 
> 
> “I would give you all of me, even this,” Thor murmurs. 
> 
> “If I could carve your heart out without killing you…,” Loki muses, though he cannot even bear to finish the thought. 
> 
> “You have it, brother,” Thor says. 
> 
> Asgard celebrates Yule. Thor and Loki love each other so very much.

Winter is still and slow. Asgard moves with it, taking each day as it comes. Sunlight is scarce, and the nights are long and seemingly eternal.

He and Thor make a nest for themselves in their bed, pulling blankets over their heads and pillowing their sides to make a fluffy, soft cocoon. Thor is ever-generous with him, sharing body warmth despite Loki’s cold toes.

Often in the white, snowy mornings, Loki wakes up with Thor’s mouth a syrupy, lovely warmth on his cock, slowly diffusing to the rest of his body. Thor’s hair is long enough to braid now, and to hold onto as Loki thrusts, lazy and sleepy, into Thor’s patient hold.

\--

The early days of winter are for feasting, and feasting is what Aesir do best, and so they round each other up and pile into their large Sakaarian ship, for Thor has declined having a hall built for him, and the ship is the warmest place that can fit their entire number.

At the feast, the children tell Loki stories of _Thor_ , of his goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjostr, and the sound of thunder made by their hooves as they ride through the sky. Loki fights to keep a straight face, thinking of those two cranky beasts letting Thor ride them in any capacity.

He joins them in their weaving, helping clumsy hands create bundles of straw into the shape of goats for Yule wreaths and the Yule log. When the evening comes, Loki kneels and carves runes of protection, warmth, and safety into their Yule log, and Thor lights it with a precise spark of lightning from his fingers.

Their people celebrate another year finished, and another year to come.

Later that night, he gifts Thor with his own set of miniature straw goats, magicked with seidr to move and to bleat. It is a nigh useless gift, but Thor takes them with gentle hands and misty eyes. He places them on the nightstand, and, after a few moments of biting and butting at each other, the tiny straw goats settle down for sleep.

“I miss even them,” Thor says with a wet laugh.

“They smelled so bad,” Loki laughs, though it catches in his throat as well.

“I know it is a Midgardian ritual to give gifts, but it is not so bad, is it,” Thor says. His face is twitching with a smile that Loki knows well.

“All right, what did you get me,” Loki says.

Thor produces, with his seidr, a carved wooden dagger, its hilt and blade decorated with etchings of mistletoe.

“Oh,” Loki breathes.

“Do you remember?” Thor asks.

Loki nods. “I’d been...so angry. I can’t even remember what for, now.”

“I was being a brute, or an oaf. A brutish oaf,” Thor acquiesces.

“As good an excuse as any to stab someone with Mystletainn,” Loki says.

“We were children,” Thor says, so easily that it rankles on Loki. Forgiving, trusting fool.

“Just barely,” Loki reminds him.

“You couldn’t have known it would poison me,” Thor reminds him.

“Could I not have?” Loki asks, “I may not have wanted to kill you, but I wanted you to hurt, brother.”

“See? You did not want to kill me,” Thor says brightly.

“Fool,” Loki says.

The poisoned blade had had Thor bleeding black before Loki’s cries had alerted Frigga, and she’d saved Thor. Saved both of them: Thor from death and Loki from damnation.

Though, really, Loki thinks, she had just delayed the inevitable for him.

It fills him with a surprising amount of bitterness now, that memory. A reminder that he came so close to nearly not having _this_ : Thor, in their bed; Thor, pressed so close to him that Loki could fall asleep to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

Loki’s hand travels down Thor’s chest, to his side, to where he had plunged a dagger into him, atop a tower. There is no scar, no reminder, the betrayal forgotten by Thor’s flesh. By Thor himself.

To think that they have come so far from then. All of Loki’s betrayals, so easily brushed aside now. Something inside of him feels like breaking at the thought of it. His eyes burn with tears that he refuses to shed. How could he have ever allowed himself to lose something so precious? He would give away entire worlds just to keep Thor here with him.

“Stay, never leave,” he chokes out, the words falling unbidden from his mouth. Loose with wine from feasting, and from Thor’s unceasing, relentless devotion. “Please, brother, I…I could not bear...”

“I’m here, right here,” Thor says, brushing away Loki’s memories. He noses at Loki’s cheekbone, earnest and gentle. He takes Loki’s hands and wraps them around the dagger, then brings it up to his heart, point-first.

“I would give you all of me, even this,” Thor murmurs.

“If I could carve your heart out without killing you…,” Loki muses, though he cannot even bear to finish the thought.

“You have it, brother,” Thor says.

Loki stares, barely breathing. He pushes the dagger in, just a bit more, its blunted wooden point barely marking Thor’s godskin.

Then Loki shakes his head, and brings the dagger to his own heart, holds Thor’s hands and pushes. Mistletoe, green and white, bursts forth from the dagger, drawing on Thor’s seidr. They climb up Loki’s shoulders, and then Thor’s, binding them together.

Loki leans up, and presses his mouth to Thor’s.

“And you have mine as well, Thor. Always,” Loki says, pulling away, eyes closed against the weight of his own confession.

“What an excellent turn of events,” Thor says, and winks. He laughs at Loki’s eye-roll, and leans in close to nuzzle at his neck, his jaw, his hair.

He pulls Loki close and breathes him in, and, for a few brief moments, is so, so quiet.

“I’m here,” Loki murmurs, an echo of Thor’s earlier promise, carefully carding a hand through Thor’s hair.

“Stay,” Thor pleads. “Please. Stay.”

“For as long as you’ll have me, brother.”

\--

That night, Thor presses up tight against Loki’s back and presses his scratchy, bearded face into the crook of Loki’s shoulder.

“Loki,” he croons softly, “How I love you, brother.”

Caught between sleeping and waking, Loki chooses the former, drifting into dreams, safe in Thor’s arms.

The last thing he feels is something splintering, and then shattering, ever so softly.

\--

Some hours later, Loki wakes up when Thor sits up, gasping. His eyes, golden and all-seeing, stare into empty space.

Loki pokes his cheek, and, when that gets no response, shoves Thor out of the bed.

On the floor, Thor blinks, eyes blue again, then groans.

“Heimdall,” he sighs. “I’ll be right there.”

“Couldn’t have bloody knocked,” Loki grumbles.

Thor stands up, allowing Loki to magic clothes onto him, and kisses the side of Loki’s head before leaving.

\--

“Anthony Stark, Bruce Banner, and Vision are on their way here,” Thor says, bustling back into the room. “Heimdall says they have been circling back around the area for some months, but have only now pinpointed our location.”

Loki, now sitting up in bed, tries not to let the cold air rattle him.

“I...may have something to tell you,” he says to Thor, before he can stop himself.

Thor’s brow furrows, but he nods.

Do it, Loki thinks, do it now or you’ll lose his trust forever.

He scrambles out of bed, needing to pull his thoughts together. Wildly, some part of him thinks: go, now, go now, and leave this behind. But it is an impossible thought.

He waves clothes onto himself with seidr, paces the length of their small room, once, twice, before Thor stands, hands open. To show Loki he means no harm. To calm a spooked animal.

“Loki…”

“I cast an enchantment,” Loki bites out. There, it is out now, and there is nowhere else to go. He plows forward: “An enchantment to—conceal us. This, our—home. Our people.

“So that no one would be able to find us if we did not want them to. I meant no malice, I swear, I only—I needed.” _Time_. _You_. The words catch in Loki’s throat and he shakes his head. Better to slit his own throat than to have Thor repudiate him in front of his friends. Better to have Thor reject him here and now, and have them done with it.

“And the enchantment is gone now,” Thor says.

“It is. And Anthony Stark and Bruce Banner are on their way to—” _To take you from us, from me_ , Loki does not say. “To ask for your aid, I imagine. Troubles rage all across Midgard, Thor. And yet I am selfish. Greedy. I would watch this world burn before I would give you up.”

“And yet the enchantment is gone,” Thor says, beginning to smile now.

Loki closes his eyes against it, and shakes. “It seems that I do love you,” he says, defeated, helpless.

“What was it?” Thor asks.

“What,” Loki bites out. He still cannot bear to look at him.

“That broke the spell. What was it?”

“I—it felt—I was—safe. I was safe. Completely and utterly.”

“A fail-safe, literally,” Thor smiles. “And though it pains me to think it would take that long for you to feel safe with Asgard—with me—I am grateful. Everyday, I would look out and wonder when it would fall, when I would have to face the world outside. I dreaded it. I suppose I am a coward.”

“No, never, you are anything but,” Loki interjects, and then:

“You knew,” Loki says, bewildered.

“I could see it. All across the cliff. It is a beautiful working. Your seidr is impeccable, brother.”

“You didn’t say anything,” Loki says. Thor has come closer now, without him realizing. Close enough to touch. Loki tucks his arms around himself. It isn’t safe, not yet, he isn’t safe yet. (And yet the enchantment is still gone.)

Thor shrugs now, sheepish, “I didn’t know until the summer. I suspected, but I couldn’t see, and by the time I could, it was too late. I feared your mockery. Foolish of me. I should have spared you your uncertainty from the start. I’m sorry.”

Loki shakes his head, speechless.

“You are a fool,” he says.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Thor says. He takes a step forward, and Loki rears back without thinking.

Thor’s gaze upon him is so terribly sad.

“Have I given you a reason to doubt me, yet again? Have I—have I done something wrong, Loki, to make you think I would be angered by this?”

“No!” Loki says, almost a yell, for it is inconceivable for Thor to think he has been lacking.

“No,” Loki says again, soft, “This, you, this whole year has been…” _Perfect_ , he wants to say, wants to drown himself and Thor in sentiment.

“Then why?”

Loki shakes his head. “I...tricked you. Or tried to. And then I underestimated you. Yet again. I see fault in you where you have not given me any cause to find fault. I’m sorry, brother.”

“Brother,” Thor murmurs, “Husband. Beloved. Loki, I love you. Do you understand this?”

Does he? Thor loves him, he knows this. But understanding it is an entirely different matter.

“I’m trying,” he whispers. He thinks of the arithmetic in his head, and wonders if he has managed to tip the scales after all.

Thor’s hand on his neck now, gentle despite its strength. Loki leans into it and thinks of all the men who have died by this hand. This is the hand of a warrior, Loki thinks, a king. A farmer. A brother, and a lover.

“May I hold you?” Thor asks, and Loki cannot help the noise he makes. He almost vaults himself into Thor’s arms.

“I’m a fool,” he says, and Thor’s arms tighten around him.

“And yet I love you,” Thor says. Loki hears the smile in his voice.

“You are a fool as well,” Loki says. “Asgard and Midgard are doomed.”

“Not yet,” Thor murmurs, drawing Loki up into an impossibly tight embrace.

Loki tilts his face up, and Thor grants him a kiss, and then another.

“We have time yet,” Thor says.

As Loki sighs into his mouth, he feels the swell of Thor’s seidr at the edge of his consciousness: it is a fine work, spreading across both of them, sealing them from the rest of the world.

They have time yet, for this. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, thanks for reading! This fic is finished; there are three more parts that will go up as soon as I get them beta-read. If you wanna hang out or talk to me, I'm [here](http://www.adaringdrinkerofdreams.tumblr.com) on tumblr :)


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